I have been using linux since about 1999 and have tried probably every major linux distro starting with redhat moving on to mandrake to suse.  I was a big supporter of Mepis for a while and prefer a debian based distro over rpm.  I was never a big fan of ubuntu. I didn't like their greater than thou attitude.  Linux mint is a great distro even tho it is based on ubuntu. Looking forward to using it for the coming years.